There is a dad two streets over from you who cracked the code on getting a defiant seven-year-old to sleep without a war. There is another one who figured out how to talk to his teenager about failure without the conversation becoming one. There is a guy at your kid’s soccer practice who has been where you are standing right now — lost, tired, trying — and he came out the other side with something hard-won and real. He is not going to offer it unprompted, because that is not how men are built. Delco Dads is built to help bring that conversation into existence
We are building a community of engaged fathers through events, digital forums, skill-sharing workshops, and findings ways to share dad strategies with one another. When the time presents itself, we invite dads to share their experiences on discipline, on co-parenting, on helping kids through anxiety/trouble or with other kids or anything on their mind, on staying present when work is swallowing you whole, and on reducing the things our dads said being said again (how many of us got the: I’ll give you something to cry about?!). We want to share and encourage others to share our parenting successes and (sometimes spectacular) failures.
The data on involved fatherhood is unambiguous: kids with engaged dads do better academically, emotionally, and socially across every demographic. We are not just being good to each other. We want to build a community of Fathers, supporting Fathers.
The culture we are building is not soft. It asks something of you. It asks that you show up consistently, and that you give back what you receive. Delco is a place of working families, old neighborhoods, new pressures, and deep pride. Our community of fathers will reflect all of that — gritty, generous, and absolutely relentless about getting better. You don’t have to have it figured out to belong here. You just have to be willing to try in front of other people and to share what might have worked for you. That, it turns out, is the bravest thing a father can do